As the comic art bibliographer at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Randy Scott is responsible for growing and maintaining the largest library comic book collection in the world. With about 240,000 comics and books about comics, the collection is larger than that of the Library of Congress. If Scott could have his way, he would have a $5,000 monthly budget. However, like most publicly funded entities these days, he doesn’t quite have his dream budget. Scott has just more than $1,000 a month to work with.
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Unshelved cowriter/artist Bill Barnes writes: “Shortly after our strip went live in February 2002 we were discovered by the library community, and overnight (literally) our readership went from 40 to 3,000. Now our readership is up to about 45,000. In those early months library workers probably made up 99% of our readers. By now they’re вЂdown’ to maybe 80%. When I want to find new readers for Unshelved I rent a booth at a library conference and hand a sample strip to the first person who walks by.”
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Rudolf Hulshof-Schmidt writes: “The vast majority of caped and masked superheroes are either scientists or socialites (or both, in the case of Tony [Iron Man] Stark), identities that lend themselves to flexible hours and personal fortunes. But where are the librarians? Surely information professionals deserve their place in the pursuit of truth and justice. And we are there, if in somewhat smaller numbers. Certainly the most famous costumed librarian is Barbara Gordon (right). By day the librarian daughter of Gotham City’s police commissioner, by night Barbara donned cape and cowl as Batgirl.”
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In a deed of superheroic proportions, an anonymous donor has given the Library of Congress the original artwork by Steve Ditko for Marvel Comics’ “Amazing Fantasy #15″ — the comic book that introduced Spider-Man in August 1962. This unique set of drawings for 24 pages features the story of the origin of Spider-Man along with three other short stories — also written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko — for the same issue: “The Bell-Ringer,” “Man in the Mummy Case” and “There Are Martians Among Us”
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Published by rwatstein November 20th, 2007
in archives and comics.
The comic book industry made a long-delayed step into cyberspace recently when Marvel Comics unveilsed the industry’s first online archive of more than 2,500 back issues, including the first appearances of Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Incredible Hulk. Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited will offer the archive in a high-resolution format on computer screens for consumers at $59.88 a year, or at a monthly rate of $9.99, at marvel.com.
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